Investigations Editor, The Age

Suherti and her family are low-income residents of a central Jakarta neighbourhood who purchase rice at a subsidised price as part of the Raskin program. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Suherti waddles with surprising speed down a narrow Jakarta street, her 62-year-old legs bowed under the weight of a huge bag of rice.

Suddenly she disappears, ducking into a gap between two buildings that's less than a metre wide, little more than a crevice. A short walk further and an impossibly small courtyard opens out, laundry hanging thick on lines overhead, ringed by three tiny houses.

The house where Suherti has lived for 40 years is all concrete blocks, rotting wood and rusty corrugated iron roof. Inside it's about the size of a one-bedroom child's room in Australia, but six people live here, and the thin mattresses on the floor suggest the generations pile up together at night to sleep.

''Exclusion area'': Cargiah's family are among the poor who receive a monthly distribution of subsidised rice. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Suherti's friend and neighbour, Cargiah, also 62, apologises for the dirt on the ground outside.

But just five kilometres from the presidential palace, in this cul-de-sac in central Jakarta, three families, perhaps 15 people, live on about $1 each a day.

Half of Indonesia's population - 120 million people - live below the World Bank's moderate poverty line of $2 a day. People in outlying regions still starve to death.

Between them, Suherti and Cargiah have raised 10 young Indonesians and are now helping raise their grandchildren.

Both husbands are dead, and they rely on their children to provide. But while some have good jobs - this area is slowly growing more affluent - poor education means social mobility is still difficult. Other children are itinerant labourers or ''do what they can'' to get by.

So Cargiah and Suherti survive on rice, vegetable soup, tempe, tofu and eggs for protein. Meat?

''Absolutely not,'' says Cargiah, except perhaps once a year on the Muslim festival of sacrifice, Eid al-Adha, when the local mosque slaughters a cow and distributes the meat.

Sometimes they go to bed hungry. Today, though, is Raskin day - the monthly distribution by the government of 15-kilogram bags of subsidised rice to the poor.

This simple program makes up more than half the Indonesian government's total social welfare spending.

''The rice is very helpful,'' Suherti says.

Programs here, though, are patchy. While both women receive the Raskin rice, only Suherti was sent a more recent temporary cash package paid by the Indonesian government to compensate the poor for rising food prices, the result of a decision to cut fuel subsidies.

''Everything in the kitchen went up,'' the local women say. ''Eggs particularly, and rice.''

Cargiah does not know why she missed out on the four monthly payments of 150,000 rupiah (about $17), nor how to get her name on the list.

In the jargon, her family is known as an ''exclusion area''. Perhaps the person doing the local survey of the poor simply missed the path to her house.

Australia's development program, AusAID, plays a part here, helping the Indonesian government build better databases of the people who actually need help, and streamlining its distribution.

Nobody in these tiny houses knows that, of course. But it's important work nonetheless.